


Four Things Ariana Dumbledore Didn't See, and One Thing She Did

by celebros



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Albus not being his best self, Ariana's POV, Background Albus/Gellert, Background everything, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied/referenced underage rape, Mental Illness, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 03:17:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3834991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celebros/pseuds/celebros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The piano grows sick. Noise-in-the-air that shouldn’t be. It grows sick because Father is not playing, but there is no Father anymore, and so it is right that the piano should be sick, that everything should be sick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Things Ariana Dumbledore Didn't See, and One Thing She Did

**one.**  
_she does not see them coming_

She does not see them coming, and this isn't too strange, but she does not hear them coming, either. She does not feel them coming. In the years that follow, there will be scraps of moments that she manages to remember this, and hold on to the remembrance. In these moments, thinking about it will be the strangest thing in the world for her.

She doesn't see them coming because she's staring at the goat kid intently, waiting until he gets just close enough to the gate and then _pushing_ it, swinging it shut. She's proud because Al has been trying to do his magic without a wand and now she's doing it even though he still can't, and she's waiting to get it just right so she can show him and he'll take her to Hogwarts. She waits until the kid stumble-trots away again, and then swings the gate open, it turns and moves back towards the gate, and she laughs delightedly as she swings it shut in its face; the next time it gets so close she almost doesn't make it in time, but she pushes out her hand and the goat stumbles back as if she'd moved it. It's that moment that things change. 

Once they are there, in the memory, she hears everything because their hands are over her eyes; she hears a sharp whistle, the sound of their feet on the grass – she can tell there are five of them, two of them are barefoot – their quiet, rough voices all falling over one another, the sound of her own breath going up and down, the sound her dress makes when their fists pull back from punches, pulling away from her skin like a sigh. The goat kid crying. The sound of a zipper, very slow. And it seems to her that before those hands covered her eyes, her senses were terribly dull, because every moment since she has heard the tiniest sounds the house makes. Noises can't hide from her anymore. 

There are other things she doesn't see when their hands are over her eyes, and many things she doesn't see in the years after, because her eyes are shut tight or she can't focus. She doesn't ever see the boys' faces, and she doesn't, either, see her father's face anymore after that, although she knows it was his shaking hands that held her cheeks, and his grey voice that begged her to open her eyes. 

**two.**  
_sheet music_

Ari plays piano because that is what she does, but she plays with her eyes closed. They put papers in front of her sometimes full of something that is not words, some other kind of story, but no one will read it to her. No one ever reads her the not-a-story on the paper and that is unwell. Ari has always played piano, but no one else may touch it except sometimes Al when his fingers twitch for it and she gives in and guides him to the seat and then holds her fingers over his eyes because he must not peek. 

The piano grows sick. Noise-in-the-air that shouldn’t be. It grows sick because Father is not playing, but there is no Father anymore, and so it is right that the piano should be sick, that everything should be sick. She plays, and she lets her ears be open, but she cannot be Father, she cannot be Father, Father would make it well again but no one must touch it, no one can be Father. 

**three.**  
_her mother's death_

Ari wakes up but her eyes do not wake up. The world is moving when Ari is not and it is the dark again. Mother is making the noise, the bird noise, the shrill and bird noise that Ari does not like, but it does nothing. 

Under her feet she finds the cold floor. She is in the room, the below-room where all things are wood and stone, and with her ears open there is Mother at the base of the stairs, her arms raised, her mouth open. There she is, trying to stop it and failing failing failing. Mother does not like to fail. Upstairs there is another. It takes a moment, with the moving and the shrill and bird noise, for Ari to hear what feet these are: Ab, crouched on the floor with his fingers pressed to the floorboards. They are moving, buzzing like hummingbirds, the floorboards, bird-in-the-house, bird-in-the-voice, bird-bird-bird-bird-bird, and Al maybe would stop the birds because he has a magic that is wild and fierce but Al is not here. Al has not been here for a long time. Remember. 

This is a hard one, this world-moving, and Ari knows that the birds will not work. Mother will close her voice and someday-now Ab will come down and hold her. And that will make the world-moving stop, the darkness will lock back away inside of Ari and she will keep it locked away, because that is what good Ari does, good Ari, good Ari, good Ari. There must be no world-moving, there must be no danger, because that is what brings the boys and the hate and the taste of their fear—

This time the world-that-moves grows very large and then Ari wakes a second time. She does not remember sleeping. The world has stopped moving, only there is a pounding noise, a terrible noise, the delicate-large hands of Ab-in-the-fear, Ab-in-the-growing, hands throwing themselves against the wooden door at the top of the stairs. 

Mother will get the door, and Ab will come down and hold her, even though the world-that-moves is over. But Mother is not getting the door. Mother is not here. There is no more Mother, no more angry-pound heartbeat, no more shrill-and-bird terrible noise, no more oh-oh, oh-oh of air-in-the-lungs. Mother has gone away. Ari will have to open the door herself. 

**four.**  
_Al and Stranger's first kiss_  
  
She hears their mouths collide for the first time. She's been sitting at the piano not listening to them talk because it's unwell, and she hears the way Al is afraid, how his love flutters like a cricket in his chest, and in Stranger she hears triumph in the way he breathes in, and his fingernails race across Al's coat. She hears her brother's foot lift from the floor, his heels rising in his boots and all that pressure on his toes, and then falling back flat to the floor. Stranger is touching his hair now, and Ari feels Al's cricket-in-the-chest bounce around a moment more before turning into magic. Their feet are sliding across the floor; one of them is moving the other, one of them has uneven footsteps, is being pushed back. The books against which one of them is pushed touch the back of the case with an uneven sound. Ari doesn't like the way it sounds; she thinks it is Al being pushed and even though his magic is crackling in his fingers, which perhaps are curling now, she can feel the panic rise like an ocean in her mouth and she releases it in echoing quantities, voice-in-the-fear. 

Ab is coming down the hallway, steel drawn to her magnet, a surface, a sword, a goblet. Al and Stranger are not kissing anymore; the sound of their touching has stopped and she knows that they are frozen, both staring in the direction of her voice-in-the-now although there are six walls and a bookshelf between them and her. Ab holds her down, holds her still, just holds her, and she knows she is burning against him, and the pressure of her noise is playing even worse noise on the piano, and the spelled windows rattle as she stops. 

Al and Stranger let go of each other's clothes. The house is silent. Ab's eyes are closed, and he is still holding her in case she starts again, because sometimes she does. Even he can hear what happens next. 

“Should we see if they're all right?” Stranger asks, his uncomfortable voice quiet. 

“No,” Al answers. 

**and one.**  
_Al, her Al, Al-in-the-love, and his twinkling eyes and his smile_

Four nights before she dies, she is lying in her very dark room in her very large bed when she feels Al opening and shutting the door, unlacing his boots with a heavy sigh. She closes her eyes and lets the sense of Al-in-the-house settle around her, over her, an additional blanket of awareness. Now he is taking the jar from the cabinet, Her Jar Her Jar, but she is not worried because right now even though he doesn't feel Ari-in-the-house they are sharing a moment awake. Ab has fallen asleep without washing the smell of yard and goat from his hands and she likes the mustiness that unwashed Ab brings to the house, but across the house Al is unscrewing the lid from Her Jar. She smells lemons, hears the slight click of her brother's teeth as he pops one into his mouth, the way they grit together as he drags the sweet to the back of his tongue, the scratch of his fingertips on the counter. He pushes Her Jar back, but does not put it in the cabinet which he is supposed to do. 

Ari-in-the-bed feels her big brother shuffle out of the kitchen, and then he begins to methodically blow out all the lights. She can tell what room he is in from the calm noises that come after the lights die, and his feet come closer and closer until finally she feels that all the house is dark and it is then and only then that Ariana opens her eyes. 

Al-in-the-love opens her bedroom door so quietly, his bones narrow enough to slide through, and she hears the muscles in his mouth quirk into a smile. 

“You're supposed to be asleep, little sister,” he whispers. 

“You're supposed to put Jar back where we belong, and Ab is supposed to wash goat hands, and Mother is supposed to speak to the walls goodnight.” 

He holds back laughs in his throat but she feels them shaking there and turns her head to look him in the twinkling Al-in-the-dark eyes. 

“It's tuck me in time but the sheets were noisy so I told Mother not,” she says seriously. 

“Certain?” Al says. “I can make those sheets shut up if you like.” 

“You are not Al-in-the-castle anymore,” she says. “Love you Mother love you Ab love you Al.” 

His breath goes quiet. Al breathes noisy most of the time but on holidays when there are flowers he gets soft and now he says, “Love you, Ari,” without any breath at all, and she watches him leave.


End file.
